Original subtitles

[Narrator] How do you build a huge steel frame

100 feet in the air on stilts?

Initially it was a head-scratcher for sure,

and a little concerning.

[Narrator] How do engineers move a 5,000 ton roof over a railroad

while the trains are still running?

This is one of the biggest stations in Belgium

It's a logistical nightmare.

[Narrator] And how do you create a brand new museum

from a giant stone jigsaw with over 1,000 pieces?

Truth be told, there were many sleepless nights.

[Narrator] This is the age of the extraordinary.

[Hayley] It's like one of those insect-eating plants,

only enormous and white.

[Narrator] Where ingenious engineers have

unleashed unchecked creativity.

Now their secrets are revealed,

as we discover the amazing stories of their construction.

[Corina] This is an incredible feat of planning

and engineering.

[Narrator] To try and understand,

"How Did They Build That?"

For me, great architecture is like great fashion.

While the most daring and outrageous designs

might look fantastic on the drawing board or catwalk,

there's no way I could ever pull them off in a regular street.

But this next building has done exactly that.

It's a custom classic, boldly strutting its stuff

right in the centre of Toronto.

[Narrator] In downtown Toronto, there's a brash new building

that's dividing opinion.

It's powerful, evocative, playful.

[Nick] I had somebody walk up to me on the street

and just say, what is that ugly piece of...?

It's a downtown landmark for sure.

[Narrator] This is what happened when an art college

that needed more space had nowhere else to go...

and an architect got the chance to go wild.

[Haley] It's crazy.

Like a building is being airlifted into downtown.

[Narrator] This is the Rosalie Sharp Centre For Design,

a tall story made real by extraordinary engineering.

100,000 square feet of new college extension

balanced on 12 90-foot stilts.

All hovering over the delicate old school.

You have to worry about another building collapsing

while you're doing all this.

[Narrator] This pixelated cuboid of steel

brought the traffic to a standstill,

but also became an instant landmark.

And it's where brilliant planning and engineering

combined to create a new classroom space out of thin air.

So how did they build it?

Downtown Toronto has the third most skyscrapers

over 650 feet in North America.

And it's Canada's financial heart.

Next door to the money making is the entertainment district,

where people come for music, theatre, sport,

or just to hang out.

And squeezed in amongst all this

is Canada's oldest educational institution

for art and design, the OCAD University.

We are embedded in the middle of downtown Toronto.

This... Chinatown's over there, you know,

the entertainment district is south of us.

[Narrator] Built in the 1920s, by the end of the century

the main college site can't cope anymore.

We just needed more studio spaces for our students.

[Narrator] It's the year 2000, and now with almost

two and a half thousand art students registered here,

the site is busting at the seams.

Another 100,000 square feet of space is needed,

but they have three big problems.

Number one, there's no space to extend the building

outwards any further.

Number two, the foundations of the existing building

aren't strong enough to add more floors on top.

We would've been driven to putting columns through

the existing building, which was basically a no go.

[Narrator] And number three, the residents in the apartments

across the road have a view over to nearby Grange Park,

and they don't want to lose it.

[Paul] The neighbours enjoyed their view of the park,

and they didn't want to be blocked by a big, monstrous

building right in front of them.

[Narrator] Faced with no easy answers, the college knows

it's going to need a radical approach.

They find it three and a half thousand miles east

in London, England,

in the unconventional mind of architect Will Alsop.

[Ellie] Will Alsop is the maverick's maverick architect.

He pushes engineers to their absolute limits.

[Narrator] He can't build outwards.

And he can't build upwards without blocking views.

But Will Alsop finds a solution

with a characteristic flash of inspiration.

Will had this idea.

We'll just raise the building out of their sight line,

so the underside of this tabletop is basically

at the roof of the apartment across the street,

so they can still have a clear view of the park.

[Narrator] It's a radical concept,

even by Alsop's standards.

[Ana] When it was presented to the various people who could

make it a reality, I think it just captured their imagination.

[Narrator] The engineers, however,

want a little more detail.

[Paul] And he came over and presented this vision

on the back of a napkin, this building floating in midair.

And we're saying, well, we gotta, may have to add

a column here or there.

And that was the big joke at the time.

[Narrator] But supporting the very large two-storey building

on stilts is no joke.

Though sometimes used in domestic housing designs,

pillars have rarely been used to support

very large commercial buildings,

and for very good reasons.

[Hayley] Usually a building is constructed from the ground up.

It has foundations, lower levels that underpin

the base of the structure and, if necessary,

additional bracing to provide support in strong winds

or even earthquakes.

But this box on stilts has no such thing.

[Narrator] But that isn't going to stop this project.

So some serious thinking goes into making Alsop's

amazing levitating building a possibility.

The huge two-storey tall rectangular box

will float 50 feet above the old college building

and 85 feet above the pavement.

Its main support will be a concrete core that will also

take all the plumbing, wiring, elevators and stairs.

But this will still leave the 275 foot-long structure

precariously balanced.

So six pairs of 90-foot-long steel legs will be added

in strategic positions to support its massive weight.

The engineers are confident these columns will hold it up.

They just don't know how it can all be built

in downtown Toronto.

Some eyebrows were raised when the site team

looked at the initial structure, how we were going to install it.

[Narrator] The first challenge is how they're going to build

the 1,300-ton steel frame

above the old, but still active university building.

There's an existing building down below.

That was a big constraint, and that housed students.

They didn't want steel to be hoisted over top

of students below because if something were to happen,

it would be a high-risk element.

[Narrator] In order to build it safely, the team decides

work will take place during the 12-week summer vacation.

That, though, is a very short schedule to build anything,

let alone this.

[Ed] We had a very tight window through the summer.

We were under the gun to make sure that we

achieved that milestone.

[Narrator] In summer 2002,

they begin work on the central concrete core.

At the height where the frame for the structure begins,

they bolt on a girder.

This is where they'll attach the first steel columns.

The clock is ticking,

so they decide to speed up the build

by prefabricating the steel structure in a factory off site.

[Edward] It saved weeks and weeks on the schedule

and made sure that those key critical structural connections

were done in a shop environment under high-quality conditions,

because there's a lot of load going through those columns.

[Narrator] The next challenge

is how to get those huge 90-foot columns into the tightly packed

grid of downtown Toronto.

Initially, it was a head-scratcher for sure

and a little concerning.

[Narrator] Next, the whole project depends

on finding an answer.

[Narrator] In downtown Toronto, roads are closed to traffic

and cleared of obstacles,

so that the trucks can manoeuvre the 90-foot-long columns along

the tight route into the site.

The level of planning required is incredible,

but when you're shutting down entire city streets,

there is no room for error.

You can see there's very tight site constraints.

Obviously, overhead wires were here at the time

for the streetcar system. It had to be removed.

[Edward] Police escorts are involved; it's pretty intense.

It had to be very clockwork operation to make sure that

everything went very quickly.

[Narrator] As each column arrives on site,

it's hoisted into position and fixed.

[Edward] Everything had to be coordinated very tightly

because there's no room for error.

I was definitely here watching to make sure that first

column fit as planned.

It was a pretty intense moment.

[Narrator] Once there, they need to bolt each

of the legs into place on a system of foundations

engineered to withstand an earthquake.

No mean feat when they're supporting 1,300 tons of steel,

90 feet in the air.

[Nehemiah] The big thing here is that this building is extremely

top heavy, so much like a coffee table, it's designed where legs

are strategically placed such that it can support

the structure down to the foundation.

However, you're looking at it and you see that the load path

is through each of these stilts, whereas if one gets damaged

and one goes, then the whole structure could collapse.

[Narrator] There's a very real danger

that if a leg gets damaged,

the whole structure could topple over.

To overcome the problem, engineers design a system

where two legs are fixed to a triangle of deep concrete

foundation piles, or caissons,

to give it extra strength.

The columns are in pairs, so each column comes down

on a caisson.

And the caissons are tied together with a beam,

but there's a third caisson, which is stabilising it

in the other direction.

So at the point of the tripod under the ground,

so it's not gonna move. Like a triangle's very stable.

And here in Canada, you have to tie caissons somehow

so they don't start to move around during an earthquake.

[Narrator] It's now August.

And school starts in less than a month.

With the columns secured,

they add more girders and steel to create the rectangular box.

The iron workers are so fast, in just a few weeks,

the frame grows from a single floor to two rigid storeys.

[Edward] It was more plug and play versus

lift and hope for the best.

And it all went very well.

So we're very, very happy that all that preplanning

materialised into a success.

[Narrator] The next challenge the engineers have to overcome

is mother nature herself.

Toronto is one of Canada's windiest cities,

with regular gusts of over 50 mph.

To prevent metal fatigue and even structural failure

caused by the constant pounding of the wind,

the team engineers the building to move a little,

absorbing some of the force.

But this solution creates another problem,

because the old college building underneath does not move.

And the two have to be joined by a staircase allowing people

to escape in an emergency.

If one part moves even just a few millimetres

and the other part doesn't, a rigid joint could fracture

with potentially incredibly disastrous consequences.

[Corina] The last thing you want during really high winds

or an earthquake is for your occupants to not be able

to use the escape route.

[Narrator] The engineers come up with an ingenious fix.

They'll attach the staircase at the top to the new building.

But at the bottom,

they won't attach it to the floor of the old building.

It's hard to notice, but they aren't actually touching.

It means if one moves, the other doesn't get damaged.

[Paul] It sits down on pads on top of the existing building,

so this is free to move in case the two buildings

are moving differently.

We cannot connect the two buildings together.

In fact, nowhere is the tabletop connected to the

existing building.

There are always two separate buildings with either an

expansion joint between them or some sort of movement joint.

[Narrator] By the start of the fall semester in September 2003,

they've won the race to build the main steel box.

Now students return to the old university building below.

And the team gets on with finishing the extraordinary

new structure above.

It takes a year, but in October 2004,

they unveil the hotly anticipated

new university building.

[Nick] You get all kinds of reactions.

Surprisingly passionate ones.

[Woman] Some people do think it's an eyesore,

but I think that's kind of what makes it important, is that

you need some things that are standing out in the city.

[Man] It's interesting.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

It's not really a thing that you get bored of.

[Narrator] The university has its extra 100,000 square feet

of space for art studios, classrooms, exhibitions

and offices. And it has it in style.

It feels so fresh, but probably pissed off some people

when it was first built, but over time showed

how important it was to actually embrace a new way

of looking at the way a building ought to be, uh,

erected in the middle of a city.

[Narrator] The award-winning building

may have divided opinion, but it is unforgettable.

And has put the university on the map.

[Ellie] And the result really is mind-blowing.

This building has literally shaken up Toronto,

which is you know, known for being quite conservative.

And this building will set the standard for many years to come.

[Narrator] One man's vision achieved the impossible,

a box of delights in midair.

This wasn't brought in because Wills

wanted a building up on stilts.

It was the site that drove to this design.

Now, some people think it was just done for showmanship,

but it wasn't. It has a purpose.

It was designed this way.

[music]

Our next stop is a railway station like no other.

This one is such a departure... You see what I did there?

From others, that Hollywood sci-fi movie makers

think it's centuries ahead of its time.

Never mind that train trip

through America's historic terminals.

When you climb aboard here, there's no mistaking it.

You're setting out on a first-class journey

into the future.

[Narrator] When the high-speed trains

of the 1990s arrived in Europe,

journeys from Liege in Belgium to places like Paris or Cologne

became rapid and comfortable.

But if you arrived in Liege, you found a small city

with the big problem...

A mainline train track that split the city in two

and a super-busy train station

no one liked looking at or using.

This is one of the biggest stations in Belgium.

It's a logistical nightmare.

[Narrator] So the city brought in an architect

with extraordinary vision and ambition to fix it.

The building was challenging everybody, including myself.

[Narrator] The team created an incredible city station,

moving in its stunning new 5,000-ton steel roof.

And if that wasn't hard enough,

they did it while the trains were still running.

[Narrator] A vast, curving monolith of concrete,

glass and steel.

An extraordinary design that tests warned could take off

in high winds.

Carved out of a hill with a history of violent landslides.

This is Liege-Guillemins Station in Belgium.

So how did they build it?

[Narrator] After four long years of Nazi occupation,

the city of Liege in Belgium was decimated.

It had to rebuild itself from the ruins of World War Two.

As part of that, in 1958,

it drew up plans for a modern, new railway station

The station was rebuilt after the war

in an emergency situation

because it was much more important

to deliver a building than to do something looking to the future

or something like that.

[Narrator] But in just a few decades,

the station began to show its age.

Its unimaginative and impractical layout made it

totally inadequate for a station about to enter the 21st century.

So the national railway company, SNCB,

decided it was time for a major upgrade.

[speaking French]

[Narrator] The brief is to create

an efficient modern station

that can handle the latest super long high-speed trains,

and be a sensational centrepiece that will unify

rather than divide the city.

They turn to an architect whose track record includes the

World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York

and Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences in Spain,

Santiago Calatrava.

Very often in railway stations is this expression you know,

you were born on the wrong side of the tracks, you know,

because they have divided cities in two parts,

and it was necessary to overcome this problem.

[Narrator] His vision is extraordinary.

The station will be moved 300 feet down the line,

with a footbridge crossing over it to provide that vital link

between both parts of the city.

In classic Calatrava fashion, his trademark concrete curves

will wrap around five new platforms

up to 1,500 feet long, which can take the high-speed trains.

To top it all off,

an incredible glass and steel arch will tower 100 feet high,

stretching 600 feet across the tracks.

This bold statement will be seen for miles around.

The client, SNCB, is blown away.

[Narrator] Although it's a stunning idea,

engineers now have to work out how to build it.

Because the west side of the station has to be built

into a hill called Colline de Cointe,

which has a dangerous history of instability.

In 1950, a major landslide saw thousands of tons of earth

engulf railway platforms, immobilising the railroad.

It was very important to have not this type of event,

to have no problem inside the station,

to be sure that the final stabilisation is okay.

[Narrator] Surveys of the hillside reveal

the soil is soft and unstable.

To prevent any catastrophic slippage,

they build a huge 70-foot-high retaining wall.

Initially, it will be anchored into the slope

by super-strong cables.

Those cables will corrode over time,

but here's the clever part...

An underground parking garage will be built into the hill,

which will take over their job

and hold back the unstable ground.

The pressure of the earth was given to the parking,

and from the parking also to the foundations of the station.

The whole complex of parking and station are holding

and retaining the wall in the back.

[Narrator] The team holds its breath

as the hill is scanned during construction.

Any signs of slippage could put the whole project in jeopardy.

It was very important to verify that we don't observe

movement of the hill to be sure that there was

no problem for the building.

[Narrator] Thankfully, it goes to plan.

And the underground section is completed without any movement

in the hill.

Work then moves on.

And over the next year, they build five new

super platforms that need to be strong enough to support

the huge new roof.

Weighing 5,000 tons and covering 600 feet of track,

it will have to be built while the trains carry on running.

[Hayley] 15,000 people travel through here every day.

This is a logistical nightmare.

[Narrator] On normal builds, they'd crane the vast sections

of steel into position,

but here, that just isn't possible.

[Ellie] They would have to crane in massive amounts

of steel right over the tracks,

and that would just be too dangerous.

[Vincent] It was impossible to use cranes to build

the vertical arches on the final location of the structure.

[Narrator] So the team comes up with what they hope will be

a solution to building the roof with its 39 vast steel arches.

A scaffolding tower will be built in front of the

old station next to the tracks.

Here the arches are welded together five at a time.

As each section's added, the roof's pushed along

a super-sized conveyor belt across the tracks

by giant hydraulic jacks.

It slides on huge Teflon pads mounted on iron girders

until it reaches its final resting place.

It sounds like a fantastic idea.

The question is, will it work?

There is often a stress period for engineer, of course,

because don't forget that the weight of the steel of the main

part of the structure at the time was about 4,500 tons.

So it's a large weight, and we are in distress.

[Narrator] The first section of arches is built.

Now it has to be slid across the tracks.

It's a tense moment as the jacks are engaged,

ready to move it in tiny 11-inch steps.

It takes a day and half to move these first five arches.

There are 34 left to go.

Over the next week,

the sections are added one at a time

until the whole roof is complete.

Then, slowly and very carefully,

the entire roof is edged into its final position.

We have pushed the 39 steel arches at the same time,

and at that moment,

the trains continue to cross the station during the building.

[Narrator] The roof may be in position,

but now they need to make sure it stays there.

This 600-foot-long structure has to be strong enough

to withstand gale-force winds.

To make sure it is, the team creates a model,

which is tested at the laboratory

with winds of up to 180 mph.

We have made a very nice, very nice model.

And on that, we have put many taps to measure the

wind pressure at several points.

[Narrator] Using the data from the model,

the engineers fix five very clever

and very strong quad legs between the roof

and the platforms.

These help to stabilise the huge roof against the winds.

It's necessary to have the possibility for a structure

to have a movement, as you can see on this support.

[Narrator] A giant steel pin is built into each of the legs.

These allow the entire roof structure to move up

to 16 inches with the wind,

preventing it from breaking apart.

There is a possibility to observe the rotation around

this horizontal axis by the wind loading on the roof,

a vertical movement equal to 40 centimetre.

[Narrator] To top the amazing structure off,

they build a giant canopy at either end,

then install an incredible 1,300 tons of glass

to glaze the entire roof.

In 2009, Calatrava unveils his stunning 21st century station

to the people of Liege,

bringing the two divided parts of the city together.

It was important for the town.

It's an emblematic structure today here in Liege.

[Narrator] It took thousands of man hours,

and hundreds of workers and engineers

nine long years to construct.

And all of that

around a living, breathing railroad that never stopped.

Santiago's visionary station hopes to transport Liege

deep into the 21st century.

[Santiago] For many cities,

the railway has been the element who permit them to project

into the future and still remain important places.

It's like a gift to the people looking forward to the future.

[music]

A 28,000-square-foot, two-storey box

sounds like the kind of place that might house

a big Swedish furniture store, right?

But wrap it up in a swirl of copper and line the inside

with over 1,000 pieces of robotically sculpted stone

to reflect the flow of an ancient river,

and what you have is one of the most extraordinary buildings

on the planet

that's home to an intriguing collection

of sports and state history.

[Narrator] In 2009,

the state of Louisiana gives a team of local architects,

designers and engineers a massive challenge...

To bring together two very different collections

under one spanking new roof.

It had to be a celebration of Louisianan sports.

[Jennae] Sport is massive in Louisiana,

from football, basketball, to water sports,

hunting and fishing. We are the sportsman's paradise.

[Narrator] But it also had to house a collection that

told the story of the region's sometimes painful history.

Those atrocities were prevalent throughout this region.

[Narrator] Its design had to take its lead

from traditional local buildings,

while being special enough to draw people in.

[Corina] Over a thousand unique pieces of cast stone.

This is the jigsaw puzzle to end them all.

It was as if NASA had come and put a spaceship here.

[Narrator] Creating this extraordinary building

would push the team to their very limits.

I had quite a few moments of doubt and fear.

[Narrator] This is the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame

and Northwest Louisiana History Museum.

So how did they build it?

[Narrator] Sitting on the Gulf of Mexico,

the state of Louisiana is rich with history

and a melting pot of different cultures.

New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette

all conjure up thoughts of Creole architecture

and Cajun cooking.

But Louisiana is also a state that really loves its sports.

So in 1958, they created a Sports Hall of Fame.

By 1971, it had outgrown the building and was moved

to Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.

And there it stood for 40 years

as more superstar names were added.

Pistol Pete Maravich,

the all-time college basketball leading scorer.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning.

And his son, Peyton Manning,

considered one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

But the growing collection of memorabilia

wasn't looking its best.

It didn't give people an opportunity to browse

and to have a true, meaningful visit.

So we always wanted a museum.

[Narrator] Meanwhile, across town,

a very different collection of regional history

housed in the old courthouse also needs needed a new home.

The city decided to combine both collections in

one extraordinary new building in the centre of town.

[Trey] The brief was a building that would include

both the history of Louisiana and sports of Louisiana.

And what is that relationship?

And how has it evolved over time?

[Narrator] Like other states in the deep South,

Louisiana's past is marked by the dark stain of slavery.

During the 1700s,

the French transported thousands of captives from West Africa

to work as slaves

in the region's vast plantations.

Those atrocities were prevalent throughout this region,

the plantations.

It was about,

wow, we can bring equity to a place that at one time

in history was about the lack of equity.

[Narrator] Trey and the team come up with a design influenced

by traditional local buildings

and its riverbank setting,

creating something that at first glance looks like a simple box,

but is anything but.

The exterior of the building takes inspiration

from the shading louvers found on Louisiana's

old plantation houses,

while inside,

the 28,000 square feet of exhibition space

will be linked by a single sinuous corridor

that flows like the river outside

through the building and into the galleries.

Made from cast stone,

coloured to match an ancient local building plaster,

it promises to remake the museum experience

for the modern age.

[Jennae] The design was beautiful.

I was just so impressed at how well it flowed.

And again, how well it fit into the community, also.

[Narrator] But David and the team of engineers brought in

to actually build the structure

are taken aback by the unconventional shapes

they have to construct.

[David] Once I was on board,

it was in a bit a moment of fear and panic

because I realised how difficult this was going to be

and it looked like quite a challenge.

Truth be told, there were many sleepless nights.

We had the shape determined.

But the question was, how do we build this thing?

[Narrator] In 2010, construction starts.

They lay the foundations,

build the two-storey, steel-framed rectangular box,

and add weatherproof exterior panels.

It's a straightforward structure

and gives no hint of how complicated building the inside

is going to be.

One of the most important elements

is the flowing riverlike corridor.

Inspiration for the material to build that comes from the houses

of 17th century French settlers.

Called bousillage,

they used a mix of river clay and moss

to make a type of plaster.

[Hayley] Bousillage is put in between timber

to fill the gaps when building.

When it hardens, it turns a cool, white colour.

[Narrator] The first problem the engineers face

is that bousillage is far too fragile to use

in a modern public building.

So they need to find a material similar in colour and finish

that is strong enough to do the job.

It turns out the answer was even older,

dating way back to the Roman Empire.

They used cast stone to create the arches and the gateways

of the Colosseum.

And the beauty of cast stone is that it can be made in almost

any colour or texture you want.

And it provides a very highly refined surface,

much finer than regular concrete, which is very good.

Normally, this is a really quick and efficient,

and cost-effective mode of construction

because once you've built the mould,

you can just churn the pieces out.

But with this system, because every piece is different,

they each need their own mould.

[Narrator] It's so complicated, that 3D computer software

is needed to design each different mould.

[Corina] The pieces of cast stone are made by hand-packing

stone cement mix into a mould.

Once it's set, pop it out

and there you have it,

a rock-hard, perfectly-shaped stone.

[Narrator] With many of the cast stone pieces weighing

over a ton and having to fit together precisely,

the next challenge is coming up with a way of holding

each of them in exactly the right position.

For that, the team turns to perhaps the most famous

statue on the planet...

the Statue of Liberty in New York.

The Louisiana team borrows a technique from Lady Liberty

more than 100 years after she was built.

[David] You have copper panels that form the surface

of the statue, which are very irregular.

And you have to hold those panels in place somehow.

Copper panels were attached to a steel frame,

so to me it was kind of an analogous approach,

except in modern times.

[Narrator] So a sculpted framework of steel,

much like the one that sits beneath

Liberty's copper skin,

is built inside the box-like outer structure.

Designed using the same 3D computer software

that modelled the cast stone,

it is shaped precisely to take the sculpted pieces.

[Trey] So that required in the placement of the

cast stone material in its form unique to each piece.

[Narrator] With the heaviest stones weighing around six tons,

the next challenge the team faces is working out how to fix

the 1,000-plus pieces in place.

[David] Then you had to hold them up

from falling to the ground.

Or if they were hanging over your head as in the ceiling

and they were completely suspended.

[Hayley] Here everything was unique, every panel size,

so installing such bespoke components

is anything but repetitive.

[Narrator] It requires the engineers to design

a complex system of unique brackets.

Each will hold a number of pieces of stone

in exactly the right place on the steel frame.

We had one connector we called Frankenstein,

which was just so absurd that we couldn't think of

any other way to do it.

I think there were five different panels connecting,

and that was probably the oddest of the odd.

[Narrator] These brackets have to be strong enough

to maintain a small gap between each piece of stone.

The worst-case scenario would be loads would flow

from panel to panel and might overload the anchors

and blow out the anchors or crack the panels.

[Narrator] The system works well on the lower sections,

but when the team starts fitting some

of the larger, higher pieces,

they hit a major problem.

So the steel structure was deflecting.

It was moving.

[Narrator] It's 2010,

and work is underway constructing the new

Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame

and Northwest Louisiana History Museum.

As each huge stone is fixed to the steel frame

of the museum's snaking corridor,

the engineers make allowances for some sag,

but the system is proving a real headache for the team.

So that was one kind of nail-biting moment.

Somehow, as we're adding weight to every panel that's connected,

our frame begins to deflect,

and then panels we thought would fit would not fit.

The great weight of all this cast stone caused

a lot of deflections on this area.

Another area there was a little smaller

that also had some issues.

[Narrator] They need to come up with a way of correcting it,

and quick.

They had to temporarily stabilise or redirect

some of the loads.

[Narrator] The solution is simple

and very heavy.

They pre-deflect the frame using ballast.

[David] So what we had to do to make this work

was to hang the heavy tub...

I believe here was something like 16 tons of weight,

and over there I believe it was about eight tons of weight...

To make that steel frame flex down a bit.

See here, the other end would flex there,

and we'd start erecting these panels,

so as these panels came in and added weight,

we'd release weight from this hanging tub.

And we'd release weight from that hanging tub,

so that the frame would stay more or less in the same place

all through the process.

So that way we could guarantee that all these panels would fit

properly without clanking into each other and causing problems.

[Narrator] With the build back on track,

the team prepares to move the highest and heaviest stone

into position.

It's a whopping 9,600 pounds.

One of the most nerve-wracking moments was the largest panel,

making sure that went in safely and fit.

[Narrator] July 2012,

the piece is safely craned into place.

Work now focuses on finishing the outside of the building

using materials that will improve as they get older.

We discussed the element of time.

How does time enrich a building?

[Brad] It did start out as a wood facade,

but there was a concern about longevity.

[Narrator] Finally, copper is chosen to make the cladding,

another material with a local connection.

And even some roof systems here in Louisiana are made of copper.

Copper is, of course, a beautiful material,

the way it ages and darkens and patinas is really beautiful.

And there's almost an unpredictability to it.

[Narrator] The copper is shaped into a cladding

of pleated sheets.

Reminiscent of the louvers on traditional Southern

plantation houses, they also help with its sustainability.

They provide shade.

And they also provide cooling for the building

or breezes throughout the building.

[Narrator] The exterior finish also protects the valuable items

that will be on display inside.

[Brad] We utilized the pleated copper and the louvers to filter

the lighting and actually not allow any direct light

to make its way into the exhibition spaces.

[Narrator] In June 2013,

after taking three years and $23 million to create,

the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame

and Northwest Louisiana History Museum

is ready to open its doors to visitors.

The displays are beautifully presented,

but it's the new building that gets the attention.

When I first walked into this gallery,

I thought for a moment,

it's a shame we have to put anything in it.

That's how beautiful it was.

And I would have never in my DNA have had that thought had it

not been something that was remarkable and unprecedented.

[Narrator] As if to match the massive engineering achievement,

one of basketball's greats

leads a fresh set of inductees into the Sports Hall of Fame.

I owe Louisiana everything,

so when they told me I was getting inducted,

you know, it's a great honour.

[Narrator] It's been a long wait for Louisiana,

but clever design,

pioneering engineering

and a nod to both past and future,

has created a building as inspiring

as the collections inside.

[Brad] To finally have a home to actually induct into,

it was really incredible to see that open up

and see those people all finally have a place

here in Natchitoches.